


Autumn Sentiments

by kuro



Category: Marvel 616
Genre: However you want to read it - Freeform, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Love Confessions, Melancholy, Multi, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Romance, or maybe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-20 02:40:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4770461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro/pseuds/kuro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony makes an unusual proposition. Steve has some trouble dealing with his feelings. </p>
<p>There is also pasta, an uncomfortable flight, and a cosy fireplace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Autumn Sentiments

Tony was standing in front of the large windows of the living room, watching the world outside. Beyond the street right in front of the Avengers mansion was Central Park, and then, slightly blurry in the distance, the ever-changing skyline of New York. Even further, there was a brilliantly blue sky, with small white clouds slowly drifting across it like a herd of sheep. Steve couldn’t see Tony’s face, but his head was tilted up and he’d taken off his glasses, holding them in his hands loosely. His lonely figure in front of the large windows looked so still and contemplative that Steve felt reluctant to intrude. He simply stood there for a moment, at the other end of the living room, staring at Tony’s back and trying to remember why he had been looking for Tony in the first place.

The room was very quiet, Steve noticed. It was rather unusual, since Tony really wasn’t a person Steve would ever associate with silence and stillness, always surrounded by people and robots and technology, always on the move for something bigger, something greater. 

He suddenly felt like he was intruding into something far too private.

Tony finally shifted and turned around, smiling at Steve in greeting.

“Autumn has come,” he said simply. “How do you feel about a mountain retreat?”

Steve looked at him in confusion. That had been an utterly unexpected question, if anything.

“Is it a mission?” he asked.

“Oh no,” Tony said and laughed. “I just feel like going. I have a lovely chalet in the Swiss Alps, and at this time of the year, the weather is still good even though it gets chilly rather quickly in the evenings. Would you like to go?”

“You’re suggesting to take some time off?” Steve asked, more than a little surprised. Tony had always been a terrible workaholic. To hear him suggest such a thing… he couldn’t remember if Tony had ever simply taken time off, be it from his work or the team, without a very good reason to do so.

Tony, however, seemed strangely unconcerned about his uncharacteristic suggestion. “I have Pepper and Rhodey to take care of things,” he said. “And the team has Sam, Natasha, Bucky… we can always ask others to step in for a bit. I’m pretty sure Logan is itching for some action. And all these Young Avengers we’ve been picking up are eager to prove themselves. Give them a chance.” He turned the glasses in his hands and looked back out of the window for a moment. “We won’t be here forever, Steve,” he quietly added. “They are going to have to manage without us one day.”

Steve felt his eyebrows knit together in consternation. “Are you dying?” he asked.

Tony broke out into surprised laughter. “Oh no, Steve,” he said, his smile turning into something softer, as if to reassure Steve. “No. But you, of all people, should know that no one can escape this fate, sooner or later. Not even Thor, and he is a god.”

“Tony, what-”

“Steve. Please,” Tony said.

They stared at each other for a long moment. Then Steve sighed heavily and gave up.

“Let me call Storm.”

Tony’s triumphant smile probably shouldn’t have made him feel as happy as it did.

* * *

The flight was mostly quiet. Tony kept staring out of the window, as if there was something of interest out in the white field of clouds - and perhaps for Tony, there was. Steve wouldn’t understand, anyway. He silently studied Tony’s face, memorising the traces that too much work and too much suffering had left behind. He still looked young for a man his age, for reasons Steve didn’t like to contemplate, but the traces were still there. If not in the lines of his face, then in the way he held himself, how the sadness never quite left his eyes. Steve had to look away.

“I’m honestly curious to know what brought this on,” he said conversationally. If Tony had thought he could simply get away with the whole thing without having to give Steve an explanation, he was dead wrong.

Tony looked at him, considering him, then he turned back to silently look out of the plane window for a long time.

“Autumn,” he said, finally. “It always reminds me of Rumiko. Ridiculous, really, because if anything, she was very much like summer. Always lively and full of energy.” He sighs deeply. “I would have married her, you know. If she’d let me. And I don’t know, maybe we wouldn’t have worked out, and after a few years of marriage we’d have fought and gotten into an ugly divorce battle, and she would have left me, never to return. It would’ve hurt. But it would’ve been fine. Because then, she got to life her live. Now, though…” He looked back at Steve again. “People die all the time, Steve, people who deserve to live long, happy lives. And I, who should have died a hundred times over, am still alive. I can’t bear it, Steve.”

Tony’s unexpected honesty made Steve speechless. What could he have said? He had no idea how to react to such an unvarnished confession.

They spent the remaining flight in uncomfortable silence. 

* * *

Tony took a deep breath when they got out of the car that had brought them up to the chalet. Steve stopped for a moment, too, to take in the gorgeous view, the mountain range in the distance and the forests in the middle of changing their colours closer by, and also filled his lungs with the crisp, clean mountain air.

It felt good, invigorating. The air here was so different from the city, with a strangely earthy smell that made him more aware of himself and his own body.

He wondered if Tony was feeling the same thing.

“So,” Steve broke the silence. “What have you planned?”

“Food, first and foremost,” Tony said with a wry smile. “I know you’ll get grumpy if you don’t get a meal soon.”

“I just have my priorities straight,” Steve countered in good humour. “Unlike some other people I know.”

“You are unbearable when you’re hungry, do you know that?” Tony chuckled.

“It’s natural,” Steve said, slipping into the old argument easily. “It’s not natural to forget eating for a whole day.”

“Inspirations strikes when it does, Steve, and it can’t be denied,” Tony reminded him, but he also reached out and gently squeezed Steve’s arm. “Let’s go inside, I’ll make pasta.”

It was rarely enough that Tony actually bothered to make pasta, and his pasta was delicious, so Steve followed him without another word. No argument was worth risking a hearty helping of Tony’s pasta. 

* * *

The chalet was extremely nice and cosy, with beds large enough to even accommodate Steve’s large frame easily, and furnishing that was of good quality, but not overly fancy and befitting of a wooden house located somewhere in the mountains. It was a good place, and Steve wondered how Tony had come by it. He didn’t really seem the type to buy little wooden houses in the middle of nowhere, but then, Tony had always been like a kaleidoscope. Whenever you looked at him again, the picture had already changed.

 

Maybe it was the enormous amounts of food and the tasty dessert that Tony had served him, making him a little drowsy and a whole lot comfortable, that Steve found himself asking the question once they had settled in front of the fireplace with a cup of coffee. (That last part was purely Tony, who counted coffee as one of the major food groups.)

“You said you would’ve married her?” Steve asked, tearing his eyes away from the hypnotising dance of the flames.

Tony looked up at him, studying Steve for a moment with an indecipherable expression on his face. “That I did, yes.”

“How did you know it was right?” Steve questioned. He wasn’t really sure why he was asking. Maybe because he didn’t understand. Not like Tony seemed to, anyway.

“It simply felt right,” Tony said, giving a tiny shrug. “It’s hard to put it into words.”

“You had no guarantee that it would work out,” Steve insisted.

“No, I didn’t,” Tony said and laughed quietly. “I might be a futurist and a genius, but even I can’t calculate feelings.” Something conflicted darted over his face for a second. “As I said, we might have eventually ended in an ugly divorce, or maybe we would have worked out and stayed together until old age - I don’t know. But it would’ve been worth trying, because we loved each other.”

“That simple?” Steve asked.

“That simple,” Tony replied.

Tony looked at him expectantly, but Steve didn’t know what to say to that. It had never seemed so simple to him.

“Maybe you’ll understand one day,” Tony mused. “When you meet someone, and you look at them and think ‘ _This one. I would be glad to have this one by my side for the rest of my life, be the times good or bad._ ’ It sounds cliché, I know, but…”

“That would be you,” Steve blurted out. Tony looked at him with wide, surprised eyes, and Steve shifted and coughed, embarrassed. “It would be you,” he insisted. “I would be honored to have you by my side, no matter what.”

Tony smiled at him, and he looked beautiful with his hair a little tousled, a blanket over his lap and a steaming cup of coffee cradled in his hands, here in front of the fireplace of a small house tucked away in the mountains. This was Tony, after all. He would still shine after the years had passed and left their marks on them both. And Steve found himself wishing to see that.

“I would be honoured, too,” Tony said, and Steve knew that it was the truth.

There was a beat of silence before Tony added, “I love you, Steve.”

Steve squirmed, making Tony chuckle with an amusement that Steve didn’t understand..

“You don’t need to say anything,” Tony assured him. “I simply wanted to tell you. I’ll stay by your side for as long as you’ll have me, Steve.”

“Thank you,” Steve managed to say.

_I will try my best not to make you regret that decision_ , he found himself thinking.

Tony smiled, as if he was somehow aware of Steve’s thoughts, but he didn’t say anything more.

 

They stayed in front of the fire for the rest of the evening, letting themselves be warmed by the fire. Tony talked about the hike to a beautiful mountain lake that he wanted to go on if the weather stayed the way it had been today, and he told excitedly Steve about all the places of interest in the region that they should visit. They discussed Avengers both old and new, missions and failures and successes alike, and at some point while Steve was elaborating on some strategical detail in a recent mission, he realised that Tony had nodded off.

Steve smiled, stood, and carefully took off Tony’s glasses and pried his coffee cup out of his hands, putting them away. He turned around and threw a few more logs into the fire to keep it going, before he sat back down in his armchair and sighed comfortably. 

 

Tony had been right, he thought. When things were right, you simply knew. And it was worth it, for however long it would last.


End file.
